Women workers still barely participate actively in the Soviets. Nonetheless, since the very first days of Soviet rule, they have been able to bring to the Soviets a lively, productive discussion about easing the burden of motherhood for women.

Once before, the Central Committee delivered an ultima—turn to the leading exponents of your policy (Kamenev and Zinoviev), demanding complete subordination to the Central Committee’s line and decisions, and renunciation of efforts to sabotage its work and of all subversive activity.
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By leaving the Central Committee, but remaining in the Party, the exponents of your policy undertook to abide by Central Committee decisions. Actually, however, you have not confined yourselves to criticism within the Party, but have brought confusion into the ranks of the fighters- in an uprising which is still going on, and continue, in violation of Party discipline, to frustrate Central Committee decisions and hamper its work outside the Party, in the Soviets, the municipal bodies, the trade unions, etc.

In view of this, the Central Committee is forced to restate its ultimatum and to request that you immediately pledge yourselves in writing either to abide by Central Committee decisions and to conduct its policy in all your statements, or to withdraw from all Party activity in public and resign from all responsible posts in the working-class movement until the next Party congress.

Refusal to pledge yourselves to either course will make it imperative for the Central Committee to consider the question of your immediate expulsion from the Party.

The future feels vague and anxious. At the same time, I feel very clearly the strength of the Russian nation regardless of its anti-government movements. Today, we can see in all its stark reality the anarchism of the masses of the Russian people and of its Jewish leaders, who play a major role in these movements.
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One can draw this line all the way through the history of Judaism and of the Russian people. The servant classes, separated from the rest of the people, have already been making history for millennia. “The people” lived its life and worked to create another. The ideological decline of socialism and populism is emerging very clearly. It will be very curious to watch how the intelligentsia will change. Whatever happens at the level of the state, the great Russian people will survive.

There has been a serious split in the ranks of the Bolsheviks, and eight of the fourteen commissaries have tendered their resignation as a protest against such arbitrary measures as the suppression of liberty of the Press, etc. The Government is now in the hands of a small clique of extremists, who are bent on imposing their will on the country by terroristic methods.
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There are signs of growing dissatisfaction at the prolongation of the crisis, both among the troops and the workmen, and several factories have sent delegates to the Smolny Institute to tell the Bolsheviks that they must come to an agreement with the other Socialist organizations. Some of them held very outspoken language, saying that all that Lenin and Trotzky wanted was to sleep, as Kerensky had done, in Nicholas's bed. It was hoped at first that the secession of so many of their leaders would bring the more moderate members of their party into line with the representatives of the other Socialistic groups, and that a Government would be formed from which Lenin and Trotzky would be excluded. This hope has not been realized, and the extremists are now making great efforts to win over the left wing of the Social Revolutionary party and to induce the seceding members of their own party to return. If they succeed in this they will consolidate their position for the time being; but if the peace which they have promised is long delayed and if the supply of bread, which is getting scarcer every day, fails, the masses may rise and overthrow them. Except in the Ministry of War, the majority of the departmental staffs are still on strike.

It was a Hussar holiday. I began a new book, Fire in the Stubble. During the morning it was snowing and it warmed up until 8 o'clock in the evening. A strong wind blew for awhile and after dinner it went up to 13 degrees above frost and the barometer went down to 73.5.

I sat one evening in a traktir—a kind of lower-class inn—across the street from the gates of Smolny; a low-ceilinged, loud place called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” much frequented by Red Guards. They crowded it now, packed close around the little tables with their dirty table-cloths and enormous china tea-pots, filling the place with foul cigarette-smoke, while the harassed waiters ran about crying “Seichass! Seichass! In a minute! Right away!”
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In one corner sat a man in the uniform of a captain, addressing the assembly, which interrupted him at every few words.“You are no better than murderers!” he cried. “Shooting down your Russian brothers on the streets!”“When did we do that?” asked a worker.“Last Sunday you did it, when the yunkers…”“Well, didn’t they shoot us?” One man exhibited his arm in a sling. “Haven’t I got something to remember them by, the devils?”The captain shouted at the top of his voice. “You should remain neutral! You should remain neutral! Who are you to destroy the legal Government? Who is Lenin? A German…”“Who are you? A counter-revolutionist! A provocator!” they bellowed at him.When he could make himself heard the captain stood up. “All right!” said he. “You call yourselves the people of Russia. But you’re not the people of Russia. The peasants are the people of Russia. Wait until the peasants…”“Yes,” they cried, “wait until the peasants speak. We know what the peasants will say… Aren’t they workingmen like ourselves?”